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When you think about the future, you may start to suffer from “abyss gaze,” the depression that settles in when you realize that we’re all doomed. Warren Ellis coined the term in a novella named “Normal,” which tells the story of futurists who suffer nervous breakdowns after discovering that there is no hope for humanity as a result of the trends in whatever area they study. […] continued “Gazing Into The Abyss: Republicans Are Selling Out Your Privacy”

It’s the ten-year anniversary of one of the most important inflection points in history. 2007 was such an eventful year that its significance seems obvious in hindsight, but it’s gone unremarked until Thomas Friedman spelled it out in a new book.

Google introduced a new app for video chats last week. Google Duo makes one-on-one video chats as easy as possible, with nothing required except a phone number and someone on the other end who’s running the app or willing to install it. Google Duo doesn’t even require a Google account. Setup takes only a moment, and once it’s set up it literally requires only a single tap to start a call. […] continued “Google Duo And Communication Overload”

LinkedIn is increasingly being used by small and medium-size businesses for marketing, recruiting, and networking. I’ll give you a bit of background in case you’re not familiar with LinkedIn, then point out one of its features that can seem creepy if you’re not expecting it.

“Connections” are at the heart of LinkedIn – the people that you know and become “connected” to, and the threads that might lead to someone helpful or some useful information. […] continued “LinkedIn And Creepy Connections”

Skype is being transformed this year into an integrated platform available on phones, tablets and computers for a variety of communications tasks. There has been a flurry of updates and announcements in the last few months – these are the highlights.

Gmail was down today for most users for at least an hour, with Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Play and some other Google services remaining down for another hour or more. A side effect: attempts to access Google services during the outage was causing Google Chrome to crash.

When Microsoft realized that it was on the verge of missing the implications of the Internet, it famously turned the company around in the mid-90s, building web access into all of its products and working out the implications of online access more thoroughly than anyone else.

Many people instinctively protect their privacy. In their minds, it’s not anybody else’s business where they shop, who they visit, what they talk about, or what movies they watch.

The divide is getting wider between naturally private people and the rapidly growing number of people who simply do not have that instinct and are living their lives in public with no reluctance and little regret. […] continued “Privacy And Geotagged Photos”

Keeping your computer up to date with patches has become the most important element of being secure online. New studies show that fully patched systems have significantly more protection against malware spread by poisoned web sites and the other forms of viruses and malware floating around.

Facebook has a vision that every single thing you do will be channeled back into a record of your life held by Facebook and shared in real-time with your friends – every web site you visit, every photo you take, every movie you see and song you play and place you go, every interaction with your friends, streamed and viewed and recorded. […] continued “You Are Not The Customer”

Are you a Facebook user? You probably noticed the significant makeover to your Facebook page on Wednesday. Your news feed is now formatted a bit like a newspaper or online magazine, with “top stories,” a “ticker” feature on the right, “smart lists” on the left, and what appears to be some new methods of filtering the feed to show you a small portion of the flood being posted by your six hundred friends. […] continued “Facebook, Google+, And The Tipping Point”

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Bruceb Consulting is one of the leading IT consulting firms in the North Bay, providing computer consulting, network consulting, and IT support to law firms, small businesses, and individuals - onsite in Sonoma County (Santa Rosa, Sebastopol), Marin County (San Rafael), and the Bay Area (San Francisco, Oakland), and remotely for clients all over California.

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